The present invention relates to a ball delivery apparatus, in particular for tennis balls, including a ball magazine, a ball firing system, and a feed system that removes the balls from the ball magazine one at a time and delivers them to the ball firing system, the ball firing system then fires the balls according to a pre-programmed firing setting that determines the speed, spin, and/or direction of each ball.
In known ball delivery systems, generally speaking horizontal traverse is effected automatically in order that the balls can be delivered to the player in various ways.
In order to make the game more realistic, it is known from the prior art that specific delivery settings can be programmed into the ball firing system and then called up. In general, such a delivery setting defines the speed, spin, and direction of the balls that are fired. In these known ball delivery apparatuses, the feed sequence frequency, defined so as to be regular by the feed system, and the associated frequency with which the balls are fired, which is also regular, is a disadvantage. In order to make play faster or slower, it is known that this feed frequency can be regulated. However, play can become monotonous because of the pauses between balls that are of the same length once the rate of play has been selected, and this is hardly in keeping with an actual game.